Keepers and goners in 2012

For independent professionals, time is probably the most valuable commodity.

We strive to save it – by becoming more efficient and productive. We aim to invest it wisely – by targeting our social media marcomm efforts well and being active in the right professional organizations. And we aim to find balance between our professional and personal time. 

Less is more

As an increasing number of social media and professional networks compete for our attention and participation, freelancers face a tough choice: to participate lightly in many or in a more committed fashion in a few? The answer depends, in part, on your goals.

For me, social media and professional networks are a vehicle through which to engage with and ultimately meet others in person. Developing relationships takes time, commitment and regularity and I plan to focus my efforts better in 2012.

Keepers

Twitter

Twitter is a fabulous information resource. Thanks to fellow Tweeps, I’ve discovered terrific blogs to follow, gotten answers to questions in a jiffy, and enjoyed many conversations with colleagues through the workday. Better still is having had the chance to meet followers and colleagues in the flesh, especially during the Journée mondiale de la traduction last December (#JMT2011).

LinkedIn

As member number 304,812 I joined LinkedIn before it even had 1 million members, but didn’t start really making use of it until about two years ago. As of November 2011, it has over 135 million members, with about 3 million in France, making it a much more useful tool in my target market.

Société française des traducteurs

Choosing to remain an active member of France’s union of professional translators is a no-brainer! Collegiality, a lively private discussion list, a rich CPD offering and local events, in addition to group insurance plans, combine to make this membership a worthwhile investment all around.

Communication et Entreprise

Another keeper! The oldest association of professional communicators in France gathers corporates, public institutions, communication agencies and independent professionals. It hosts regular workshops and round tables, publishes a quarterly magazine (for which I’ve been interviewed twice!), spearheads issue-oriented projects (such as the Guide de la relation Indépendant – Entreprise/Agence), and offers a solid and diverse CPD programme in which I’ll be instructor as well as student this year.

Goners

Viadeo

I’ve been a premium member of Viadeo for the past two years (because you can hardly do anything on that network otherwise), but I shall not be renewing it, cheap as it may be. I find it cumbersome to navigate and too filled with service and product offer broadcasts. I don’t find it an appealing space in which to spend time and contribute. I’ll keep my profile alive but won’t rely on Viadeo in my networking or business development endeavors.

IABC

I joined IABC (the International Association of Business Communicators) last summer, seduced by its information and resource-filled website and incredibly rich live and remote conferences and courses. I’ve read its quarterly magazine from cover to cover and shall probably order some of its publications before my membership runs out.

It’s a great organization, so why am I not renewing my membership? Because all that drew me in is tough to afford for an independent professional. Every single conference, workshop or course (even remotely delivered) I’ve been interested in signing up for had a price tag above $1,000. Even one-hour webinars cost around $100 for members. It is an organization that seems to cater to large corporates and their managers, not SMB or independent professionals. And that’s a pity. They could, as Communication & Entreprise does, apply rate scales depending on the size of the member organization, allowing for a fruitful mix of all players in the corporate communications professions.

Klout

After reading Pam Moore’s blog article Why I deleted my Klout profile, I went ahead and did so as well. I’m not on Facebook for a plethora of privacy and copyright issues, and Pam’s article explained well the similar drawbacks with Klout.  Thanks Pam!

Explorations

I signed up for Google+ when it came out in beta, but haven’t taken the time yet to learn to use it properly. I’ll play with it before making a decision. Advice and how-to’s most welcome!

Your choices and recommendations?

Where will you invest your precious time in 2012? Do you take a “sprinkle approach” or a concentrated one and why? What networks and organizations have you found worthwhile and would recommend to others?

“Social media is a research platform.”

Love Greg Cargill’s definition. Greg is an early social media expert and currently VP for Client Services at the Blitz Agency.

He spoke at the Social Media World Forum, which took place in New York’s Javits Center November 1-2, 2011. I jotted down several take-away quotes from his session that I thought you might enjoy – and may help your business strategy evolve.

Pitching a client

Don’t pitch a strategy to a client without having sold your time to do the research.

The golden circle of why, how and what starts with “why”. You can’t define a worthwhile strategy without answering the “why” question first, and that takes research, lots of it, on variables such as culture, people, context and category.

Do the research, get paid for it, design the strategy and get the client to sign off on it *before* rolling out your marketing campaign.

What are you selling?

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Successful marketing is emotional. You need to resonate with your target audience. I’ve spoken about this often on this blog, such as here and here.

Do business with people who believe what you believe.

Choose clients, colleagues and team members who share your values and with whom there is an easy and comfortable dynamic with which to foster creative ideas.

Not 3 but 7 Ps

You’ve heard of marketing’s 3 Ps: product, price and positioning.

The 7 Ps are a golden rule to remember before launching a new project:

Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

Enjoy this post? Share it! And feel free to add great quotes you’ve heard recently in the comments below.

This according to Ed Gandia’s 2011 Freelance Industry Report in which 1,204 freelancers worldwide representing 37 professions participated in August 2011. Translators represented 9% of respondents, or roughly 108 people.

One could say such a small sampling is not representative of the highly pixelized translation profession (disclosure: I did not take the survey). Nevertheless, a closer look at some of the data Ed Gandia collected does suggest much of the information is probably pretty accurate.

To wit:

“Translators are also heavily concentrated (26%) in the $30-39/per hour category” (p.23), but beat other professions hands down in billing on average 80% of their work hours each week. Though the number of years of experience influences average hourly rates earned, the chart on p. 24 shows a fairly even distribution up to the $100-150/per hour range, where freelancers with 10+ years of experience dominate.

Unfortunately, the report does not present a cross-analysis of hourly rate/profession/experience – information that would tell a richer story. Ed, can you add it to next year’s questionnaire?

Billing 80% of your working hours

Sounds great unless:

• It means focusing on quantity rather than quality
• It indicates a pattern of working predominantly against the clock
• It leaves no time to promote your business and develop a solid marketing backlog

Spending less than 2 hours a month on marketing

If you can barely spare 9 minutes a day (2 hours/22 working days) to promote your expertise, your work and your business, your dependence on those who currently provide the bulk of your work is dangerous.

If you can only invest 9 minutes a day on marketing, then it should be no surprise raising your rates and landing better projects are a huge hurdle (complaining about lousy translation rates is a recurring – and oft sterile – theme on-line).

If you can only invest 9 minutes a day, it means you’re are not driving your business, it’s driving you. And isn’t greater independence one of the main reasons one chooses to be a freelance professional?

11.2% of translators surveyed invest 16 hours or more on marketing

And about 4% (an estimate looking at the chart on p.23) of translators surveyed earn between $100-200 per hour. Is there a direct corrolation?

I believe so. Contrast with copywriters, about 25% of whom bill over $100 per hour and 26% of whom spend 16 hours and up per month on promoting their services.

One a day

“One apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Walking one mile a day keeps you fit.

What could marketing one hour a day do for YOUR business?

P.S.: The International Freelancers Day On-line Conference is September 23rd. I’ll see you there (if my recently grumpy Internet connection permits).

A few weeks ago, a translator I do not know contacted me wishing to publish a guest post on this blog and suggesting we exchange links on each other’s websites.

For the sake of this article, let’s call her Martina.

I was quite open to the idea and asked her to tell me more about herself, her business and what she wanted to write about.

Martina has set up her own translation agency, which covers many language pairs and areas of expertise. She translates herself in language combinations I do not provide.

Her offer

I could write about translation in general, about being a translator, about choosing a translator…anything really. (my emphasis)

One of my objectives is for my company’s presence online to generate value for the translation industry. In essence, that translates into providing valuable contributions to the debate on relevant issues in our industry. In that sense, the fact that your readership is not my target market isn’t really an issue. Is that convincing enough?

Nope. 

So she came back with a somewhat more specific subject:

A topic I’d be particularly interested in writing about would be a practical checklist, or pointers, for translators to ensure the quality of their work and for clients to ensure the work they are being delivered is of quality.

Yeah, and? Whose quality standards?

This is where our exchanges left off. I’d asked her to make her business case, with the underlying question being, of course, “what’s in it for me/my business/my clients?”  I’ve yet to be convinced. 

Guest posts must be beneficial to the host

Guest blogging is a great way to boost your own website or blog’s visitor count and Google ranking. 

Guest posts must provide value to the host by contributing content that is in line with the host blog’s scope, business and targeted readership and/or by driving quality traffic to it.

Seth, Brian, Alejandro – among bloggers I read with relish – this space is yours whenever you want!

Guest bloggers’ businesses should be in harmony with the host’s market

I am not keen on promoting translation agencies. Why would I want to drive traffic to an agency’s website? I strive to educate corporate clients that translators are not interchangeable and that a project’s success rests on finding the right professional and on having direct communication between translator and client.

Guest bloggers’ pitches should be precise and detailed

When freelance journalists pitch an article to a newspaper or magazine, they write a good query letter.

A query letter at least:

• Starts with a hook
• Details what you are going to write about
• Provides an outline and estimates the copy’s length
• Shows why the subject is of interest to the paper and its readers
• Proves why you are the right person to write about it
• Includes clips of previously written work

As Susan Finch on Men with Pens puts it:

Your pitch is not about you and what the company can do for you. Always approach a client with the understanding that the pitch is all about what you can do for them. (my emphasis)

Did Martina’s pitch do that? You tell me.

Want to write a guest post on Intercultural Zone?

I welcome queries, in English or in French. Sell me on your idea. Show me what it will do for my target market and me. Share your passion and expertise.

Download the guest post submission guidelines.

Your profile page

Your ‘about’ page is probably the first link visitors click on when they browse your Website. In “15 Key Elements all Top Websites Should Have“, Web designer Selene Bowlby points out her own profile page gets more visits than her services or portfolio pages.

Prospects want to know who you are, if you’ve got the right skill set, seem trustworthy and personable and whether they’d like to work with you. You decide what information you wish to promote and share with your visitors and the tone you’d like to set.

Yet an About page usually does not define the profile of prospects you wish to contact you.

Precise targeting

In overhauling my Website, one goal was to filter the prospects it pulled in. A Website should be one way independent professionals can pre-qualify leads and save themselves precious time. Getting emails or calls from prospects who find me through my Website is great. Spending time politely responding why copywriting at €10 a page or translating a 10K word document in 48 hours at less than minimum wage are not on my radar takes time away from what is really important.

Design, project examples and client testimonials play a role in showing what your target market is. Publishing your rates, a hotly debated topic, also serves to discourage those who choose service providers on rates alone. I didn’t go down that road because giving an estimate without having detailed project specs doesn’t make sense to me. As a buyer, I’m often flummoxed when a quote comes in way above or below published rates, often expressed as starting at or from $x to $y. Neither reflects well on the seller.

Testing a new approach

If an About page is a push marketing tactic, can another type of About page be a more focused pull marketing one? Wouldn’t it be helpful also for prospects visiting a Website to know if the fit is likely to be promising?  And if Web copy should engage the reader (speak with me, not at me), then why not address your target market confidently?

Off I went to dissect my client base.  How did we find each other? Who was the first point of contact? Who retained my services and with whom did I work on projects? What do they want to accomplish? What keeps them up at night? What are the common denominators among those clients and projects I enjoy most (and want more of, of course)?

About you

Those are the prospects I want to speak with through my Website. So I said so. In an About you page.

One Twitter follower, marketing translator @NadVega thought it a “great move.”

Sure, it’s risky. But it’s a measured risk. To date, most of my clients come through word of mouth. The site’s job is pull marketing, so I might as well say up front what I would end up saying down the line to inquiries that are outside the scope of my marketing strategy.

Time will tell whether the two About pages get the most visits of all the pages on the site. And whether the About you page proved to be a useful addition to a freelance professional’s core page set.

How do you talk to prospects you want to connect with on your Website?

For this last post of 2010, I’d like to ask you what ingredients you aim to stock up on to run and develop your business next year.

What new dishes (services) have you cooked up this year that will remain on your menu? Which new dishes or old favorites will not make the cut?

What spiced up your marketing strategy in 2010? Which savors do you want more of – or less of – in 2011?

What business development tactics provided the best ROI? Are there new ones you are planning on testing?

And finally, rather than asking whether you are planning to increase your rates some time in the New Year, I’m wondering whether freelancers and small and medium-sized business are thinking of reviewing how they price their services (word, hour, day, flat fee, retainer, subscription, other).

I’ll be fair and play too.

Here are some of the changes that spiced things up for me in 2010 that I will continue to season and perfect in the coming year.

• 2010 was my first full year outsourcing my accounting. The investment is well worth it. It freed up a lot of time, reduced stress and provided peace of mind.
• Every single new client this year came from face to face networking or word-of-mouth. It is not easy to go out there, find the right venues, approach strangers and provoke interesting exchanges. I have to kick myself. It pays off.
  In 2011, I will be focusing my business development energy on this type of pull marketing.
• One trend that cropped up in 2009 and strengthened this year is project scope expansion – the kind of opportunity where you are contacted to do A, and by the time you finish taking a good brief, you are entrusted with A + B and maybe even C. It doesn’t happen every time you take an excellent client brief, but it won’t if you don’t. During this exercise, the client may discover lacunae in their needs analysis or realize that your expertise or skill set can help them achieve several objectives in one go.
• In light of the point above, my fee setting approach has had to adapt too. I am more frequently submitting all-inclusive flat fee value-based quotes for complex but well-defined projects. For those that include variables hard to peg at project start, I’ll combine a flat fee for part of it with an hourly or day rate. A few faithful clients with straight translation requirements still prefer to be invoiced per word, and I am striving to show them that this approach is not necessarily to their advantage.
• In a recent post in French, I talked about the management pyramid: at what level you position yourself influences who you have as a contact within your client’s company, the types of projects you will work on, and thus whether it is your fee or your value that determines whether you land the contract. The higher up the ladder, the less you will face haggling over fees and the more inappropriate it is to take a widget-based approach to fee setting.
• Finally, and much to my surprise, I’ve seen a shift in where my business’ growth market may lie. When I set up shop 10 years ago, I wanted to work with small and medium-sized businesses to help them grow and reach international markets. Most were unwilling to make that kind of investment and many in France did not have the “outside consultant” reflex – it was not part of their business culture. Large and listed companies quickly became my client base.
  I wonder whether it is the international economic climate, the inroads globalization has made to all sectors of the economy, or a professionalization of new ventures in France, but a few new clients are very young companies. Partnering with them is thrilling and quite different from working with major accounts. Maybe I’ll keep that for a separate post!

Your turn :

What worked and what didn’t in 2010, what new ingredients do you plan on adding, what business development menu will you serve up next year?

Why should a freelancer plunk down €399 to listen to
Garr Reynolds (or another top pro) for a few hours
on a December afternoon?

Sound expensive? Should you keep the cash for a rainy day?

Maybe, until you consider the following:

How much does losing a client pitch cost you?

You busted your chops taking a good client brief, constructing a top-flight proposal, proving your expertise and added value. Be it due to nerves, a poorly designed PowerPoint presentation, or an inability to dazzle your client with expert delivery, you lost the project.

How much does freezing up at networking events cost you?

By an amazing stroke of luck, you’ve won an invitation to one of TED‘s annual conferences (a four-digit ticket out of reach of most freelancers!) where you may get the chance to meet the professional you most admire.

And what if he or she asks, “What do you do?”

Are you going to blow it with a lame answer such as: I’m a software programmer, I’m a web copywriter, I’m a translator, I, uh, am a business consultant?

Zzzzzzzzz…Oh! Please…

How much can boosting your own presentation training expertise bring you?

I’m a firm believer in continual professional development. The presentation skills workshops I run train clients to deliver top-notch presentations to cross-cultural audiences by honing their verbal and non-verbal communication styles.

I need to spruce up my pedagogical approach to helping my clients also organize, prepare, and design killer presentations. Beyond Bullet Points and its PowerPoint add-in have not proven ideal tools for me in a workshop setting.

How much can perfecting your ability to craft compelling presentations for clients bring you?

Whether you are a copywriter, a marketing or business development consultant, or a translator, clients rely on you to get their message across in a compelling and meaningful way.

How many horrendous PowerPoint presentations have landed on your desk? How many times has a client insisted you add another 5 lines of text on a carefully designed slide? How many times have you sat in a meeting and ignored the speaker because you were too busy trying to read all the small print projected onto the wall?

How many times have you feared telling your client:  “This is garbage, and it won’t help you reach your goals.”

You’re a pro and you’ve got talent. Even an innate gift takes work to perfect. To stay fresh. To adapt to new technologies and new modes of communication. To keep learning.

To have the guts to tell your client he or she hired a cutting-edge pro who has trained with leaders for a reason. To be the trusted advisor you are.

Invest in yourself, it pays.

Investing your hard-earned money in perfecting your skills pays off.  Selecting top venues is also a smart networking opportunity: you can meet like-minded professionals who believe paying top dollar for stellar services is a wise business investment. And aren’t those the types of clients and colleagues you want to work with?

I’ll let you know after December 7, 2010 the value of this investment.

Galanthus nivalis, blooms in January-February

On this first autumn Sunday, I spent the afternoon planting bulbs in my garden, bulbs that – fingers crossed – will bloom in turn from January through August 2011. And many years thereafter.

I have to wait at least 4 months to see the first results of my efforts.

If this autumn is too dry, I will have to remember to water them gently.

And if winter comes cold and early, I will have to remember to add a layer of mulch for protection.

You reap what you sow, and all that jazz.

Building your business is like planting a garden.

• It takes visualizing and planning.

What do I want my garden (business) to look like next year? In five years?

• It takes choosing the right plant for the right soil and exposure.

What is my ideal client profile? What do I need to do to learn everything about his business and his needs?

• It takes attentiveness to shifts in the environment and ability to respond to them in a timely fashion.

What is affecting my client’s business today? How do I adapt to his shifting priorities and constraints to continue to deliver the added value he needs for his business to thrive?

• It takes patience and restraint.

It’s not instant soup. Sometimes, things take time. You have to know when to add fertilizer and when to lighten up on watering. The balance between keeping in touch with useful information and being a pain in the neck.

• It takes weeding and pruning to let the strong growth blossom.

What shifts do I need to make in my service offering? Which areas should benefit from continuous training and specialization? Which clients should I let go of at this stage?

• It takes gratitude and appreciation.

Appreciation begets care – you don’t treat weeds with TLC and admiration, you dream of dousing them with RoundUp!

And so with clients and colleagues. Take care of them. Do favors. Make their life easier. Say thank you. Do a random act of kindness, you’ll get blossoms.

The discussion with your prospective client has gone well. You’ve listened actively, asked all the right questions, taken a good client brief, showed you understand his objectives, presented your USPs, and illustrated how and why you are the best professional to solve his problem. The client is interested in your services and enthused by the manner in which you propose to tackle the project.

The signals are all green. You’ve achieved precommitment.

Don’t let them turn orange.

High added value services, convincing fees

Let’s face it. It’s rare for a prospect to hear a fee proposal and accept it without blinking — regardless of your rate.  (Should that happen, start to worry: either you’ve sold yourself short, you’ve missed a key component in the project’s detailed specs, or the client is a poor business person.) A prospect will strive to get you to lower your rate or to get more for less. It’s a predictable phase in the negotiation process and you’re prepared to exchange a few concessions. Successful negotiations are reciprocal, each party walks away with something. The “giving up” is balanced.

Facing a monkey wrench

What happens, though, when the music stops and there is no choreographed dance? What do you do if the prospect states flatly “your rate is too high” or turns silent, putting the onus on you?

How do you typically react? Do you try to prove your rate is in line with the service offered? Do you try to convince your prospect again of the benefits of working with you, running the risk of overselling? Do you get a tad defensive, explaining how hard the job is, the time it is going to take you to accomplish it?

Make friends with silence

Most of us are ill at ease in the face of silence or in being silent ourselves. It triggers anxiety, discomfort, fear or guilt. Rarely does it feel natural or comfortable.

In a fee negotiation, striving to fill the silence is rarely a winning tactic: it dilutes your message, distracts both parties from paying attention to the key issues that brought you together and weakens your credibility.

As Mahatma Gandhi said: “The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is.” Try to remain confident and quiet, let the prospect break the silence.

Three possible outcomes

1. The prospect commits. You’ve won the negotiation hands down. It’s smart then for you to reward your new client in some way.
2. The prospect offers a compromise. The discussion is reopened on more balanced grounds, it’s up to you to show goodwill if the prospect’s suggestion is reasonable.
3. The prospect walks away, the negotiation is closed. Don’t regret losing the project, the conditions for winning it would not have served you well. And sometimes, prospects do come back.

Remember, if you sell yourself short, the prospect may worry you’ll sell him short.

In yesterday’s post, Nobody Knows What You’re Talking About, Mitch argues that we know what we do so well that we have a hard time explaining it clearly to others.

And “others” aren’t just clients and prospects.

“Others” = everyone you come across since, as we all know, referrals are the single best way to land new business.

Can you type this in [foreign language] for me?
Folks, if you can’t explain what you do well,
how can you market your expert skills
and bill what they are worth?

Easy question, right? Such a ubiquitous tool in our lives, everyone knows what it is, ya’think? Surprise:

YouTube – What Is A Browser?…

In three sentences or less, what do you tell people you do?